A board says: "quality needs to go up." Everyone at the table nods, and everyone means something different. One director thinks of fewer complaints, another of less rework, a third of an audit score that has been stuck at the same level for two years. As long as the ambition stays at that level, it is not measurable and therefore cannot be assigned to a role, a team or a system.
To make the ambition measurable, it must first be broken down into layers: a vision (why quality matters now), a vision state (what the organisation looks like in a few years), a target (the concrete level within the coming period) and a target state (what actually works differently in the daily process by then). Only at that last level does it become visible what the organisation must be able to do to get there.
Raising quality means something different today than it did ten years ago, because part of the checking work is no longer by definition work for people. When testing quality, three types of work run together:
In one company the first category has already largely shifted, with quality inspectors mainly doing the second category. In another company every rule is still checked manually, not because that is faster or better, but because no one has established which part of the work can actually be shifted and which part must remain with people for other reasons. That difference rarely lies in the technology. It lies in whether the organisation knows its own quality work: which steps, with which data, according to which rule.
Before quality work can shift, an organisation must be able to demonstrate something on a number of dimensions: clear quality standards, traceable data on where deviations arise, a process that is documented rather than kept in people's heads, decision rights that make clear who may approve a deviation, and oversight that can explain why something was rejected. Without that foundation, "raising quality" remains an intention rather than a target state.
These eight dimensions together form the organisation's readiness. Where the organisation is already far advanced on one dimension — for example in documenting standards — it may barely be able to make a statement on another, such as the traceability of data. That spread is precisely why a general statement like "we are ready for it" says little.
Between ambition and execution lie five moments at which the organisation must ask itself whether it can truly proceed: is the standard sharp enough, is the data reliable enough, is the decision right assigned, is oversight set up, and is there a way to roll back if something does not work. Every gate that is skipped comes back later as a problem no one saw coming — usually in the form of a quality incident that could have been caught if the role responsible for it had already been designated.
A quality ambition does not automatically translate into an organisation chart. Who assesses a deviation the system cannot place? Who is responsible for the standard itself, separate from checking compliance with it? Who may let a quality deviation pass, and under what condition? These questions lie close to questions that also arise when limiting dependence on a small number of key people — quality that exists only in the heads of two experienced people is by definition not measurable at organisational level.
The ambition has succeeded once you can show three things: a target state that has been reached at a previously agreed measurement point, roles that actually decide on deviations rather than merely recording them, and freed-up capacity that has visibly shifted from repeated checking work to establishing and adjusting standards. That last point touches on the question of how an organisation grows without taking on extra staff, since hours freed up in quality work can be deployed elsewhere without headcount increasing. Which work in your organisation this concerns, and whether the decision on this falls under your own legal requirements for personnel decisions, is up to the organisation itself; this piece does not make that judgement for you.
The ambition is often formulated too broadly for the period in which it must be achieved. "Raising quality" within a year may be unachievable if the underlying data is not yet traceable; in that case phasing is needed before the target state becomes realistic. The ambition is also sometimes detached from the company's broader vision, whereas it is precisely useful to first make the vision itself measurable before a sub-ambition such as quality is given a place within it. And anyone wanting to raise quality within a new market or new segment would do well to look at which other capabilities entering a new market requires, since the standard for quality there rarely matches the existing standard.
The underlying question — which part of the quality work in your company can genuinely be taken over by AI, which part requires oversight and which part remains work for people — is answered per task with the work scan from FTE TO AI. Anyone who first wants to know where the organisation stands on the eight dimensions can take the free readiness check: eight short questions, one per dimension, giving a picture of where you are furthest along and where you are least advanced. The full ambition test, with the four layers and the five confidence gates in detail, is under construction.
Vertel wat u wilt bereiken, dan kijken we samen wat daarvoor moet staan.
Answers come from this site’s knowledge base. Not tailored advice, and not a scan of your company.